Fiction: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera ISBN: 978-1-78758-886-8 Pages: 288 pp Imprint: FLAME TREE PRESS
It was meant to be an in and out mission…
Jubilee is a lawless, artificial world existing within its own parallel universe; a seething cesspool of vice ruled by an eccentric AI.
So they say.
Detectives Col and Danee are sent to Jubilee on a hastily organised mission to recover the body of a leading conservative politician (someone it seems, has been a naughty boy). But the corpse has been switched and the imperilled partners are drawn together. They might be falling in love, or they might be saving the galaxy– either way the authorities will not be pleased.
FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing Independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction and fantasy. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at http://www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress
Format: 392 pages, Hardcover Published: December 15, 2023 by Harper Voyager ISBN: 9780008596965 Goldsboro Books Exclusive Edition
Two elven sisters become imprisoned in the hidden world of the fae where danger, and love, lies in wait. Faebound is the first book in an enchanting new trilogy from the internationally bestselling author of The Final Strife.
A thousand years ago, the world held three fae, elves, and humans. But now the fae and humans exist only in myth and legend, survived by the elves who are trapped in an endless war over the remaining lands.
Yeeran is a colonel in the elven army and has known nothing but a life of violence and hardship. Her sister, Lettle, is a diviner whose magic promises a different future for her and her sister, but the prophecies have yet come to pass.
When a fatal mistake leads to Yeeran’s exile from the Elven Lands, Lettle, fearful for her sister’s life, follows her into the uncharted territory beyond their borders. In the wilderness the sisters encounter the largest obeah they have ever seen. Part leopard, part stag, the obeah’s magic is harnessed to make weapons for the elven war. It is during this hunt that they are confronted with the a group of fae who take them captive. Imprisoned in a new land, they must navigate the politics of the fae court all while planning their escape.
Now Yeeran and Lettle are fighting a different kind of between their loyalty to their elven homeland and the intoxicating world of the fae, between what duty decrees is right, and what their hearts tell them they need.
My Review
Alright, one last review for the day and then I’m off to bed. I’ve just read about 300 hundred of the 395 pages this evening. I read the rest last month. I’ve been busy. Now I have to wait for the next one! And it promises to be so good!
I don’t normally like romantic fantasy, even though it seems to be a really popular genre at the moment. I prefer fantasy with a romantic sub-sub-sub plot. Fantasy that could stand without the romantic elements. There should be more that just lust and romantic love moving the plot forward. Nor should sex be substituted for actual character development.
But.
I like this one. The characters are fun, there’s battles, murder, prophesy, finding and losing family, betrayal, talking animals…all the fun stuff. The plot does rely a bit on the enemies to lovers trope, but that’s a romantasy staple and in the context it actually works. El-Arifi doesn’t use sex as a substitute for character development, although there is some in there. On the beach, of all places.
The main characters are Yeeran and Lettle, a colonel in the Waning army and a Seer. They are sisters in their late thirties and twenties, respectively. That makes a nice change. Main characters that aren’t children. They’ve had a hard life. Yeeran chose to join the army and fight in the Forever War, while Lettle was too young to leave, and had to stay with their father. After poisoning him as dementia took control, Lettle seeks solace in an old temple, and meets her mentor, a Seer, who takes her to their capital and trains her in divination. Yeeran rises to become the youngest general in the Waning army, while Lettle becomes a powerful diviner, although divination, the gift to elves from the moon god is increasingly ignored and disparaged.
Then Yeeran makes a battlefield mistake that costs hundreds of lives. Sent into exile, Yeeran seeks out a way to win back favour with her chieftain/lover. Lettle, and Yeeran’s Captain, Rayan, follow her into exile, through the neighbouring Crescent and meet up as Yeeran is hunting an obeah.
Then things turn nasty. Because the obeah is faebound to a fae prince, who will die when the obeah does, and a fae princess witnesses the death. There is a nasty fight and Yeeran is condemned to death. But first the three elves must be marched through the wasteland to the underground home/prison of the fae.
Just when it looks like everyone is going to die, Yeeran bonds with an obeah herself. This changes everything. The fae won’t kill an obeah, and killing Yeeran would kill an obeah. This gives Yeeran, Lettle and Rayan a few months respite to find a way to escape. Something is happening outside the fae lands, and inside there is dissension in the ranks. The arrival of three elves changes the balance and they will all learn something about themselves and the world.
I’ll admit, my favourite character is Pila, the obeah bonded to Yeeran. She’s a sarcastic bint and I love her. The elves and fae are okay, I suppose, but I want more obeah adventures! I’m joking, although Pila is my favourite, I like the way the characters are developing and the push-pull of duty and attraction. Lettle sees most things more clearly than her sister, but Yeeran is too bound up in her training to accept that Lettle might be right. The tension between the two sister, and the tension between Yeeran and Furi, drive the story forward. These tensions represent the tension between two elvish worldviews and the competing elvish and fae worldviews, that need to be reconciled for them the move forward.
Furi is furious most of the time, be as the reader gets to know her through Yeeran’s eyes, we discover that the anger is a cover for grief, pain and fear. She’s trapped in Mosima, trapped in her duty to people and family, her future is determined for her by a curse, and she has no way out. She turns this outward towards elves in general and Yeeran in particular. Yet, it’s the arrival of Yeeran, Lettle, and Rayan that will eventually free her.
Also, it’s very, very queer. As in the societies are queer normative. And I love to see it.
That’s the big reveal at the end. Which I’m not going to spoil. You all need to go out and get this book. The standard edition will be published in a week or so, and I think I have a copy on order with Waterstones. (Look, we all know I’m a completist, I can’t help myself. I just found out there’s a FairyLoot exclusive edition and I can’t get it! It’s very frustrating!)
Valentine Weis is a salvager in the future wastelands of Utah. Wrestling with body dysphoria, he dreams of earning enough money to afford citizenship in Salt Lake City – a utopia where the testosterone and surgery he needs to transition is free, the food is plentiful, and folk are much less likely to be shot full of arrows by salt pirates. But earning that kind of money is a pipe dream, until he meets the exceptionally handsome Osric.
Once a powerful AI in Salt Lake City, Osric has been forced into an android body against his will and sent into the wasteland to offer Valentine a job on behalf of his new employer – an escort service seeking to retrieve their stolen androids. The reward is a visa into the city, and a chance at the life Valentine’s always dreamed of. But as they attempt to recover the “merchandise”, they encounter a problem: the android ladies are becoming self-aware, and have no interest in returning to their old lives.
The prize is tempting, but carrying out the job would go against everything Valentine stands for, and would threaten the fragile found family that’s kept him alive so far. He’ll need to decide whether to risk his own dream in order to give the AI a chance to live theirs.
World Running Down is Al Hess’s first traditionally published novel; he is also an incredible artist. Check out his instagram! He also has a website.
Content warnings (from Al Hess’ website):profanity; alcohol use; M/M open door sex and sexual elements; brief violence; brief misgendering and transphobia; body dysphoria; abduction; classism; risk of forced sex trafficking; toxic friendship/codependency; a fictional denomination of Mormonism and discussion of religion
Rep: trans, gay, lesbian, non-binary, and (briefly mentioned) polyamorous rep; M/M romance ADHD main character (some people have claimed Valentine for Team Autistic as well, and I am totally okay with that!)
My Review
I picked this book up from the Angry Robot Books stall at FantasyCon, and got a very cool art card with it, drawings of Valentine and Osric. Al Hess did the drawings and the cover of his book. I want the rest of the postcards Al drew for the characters but I don’t think they’re available anymore. I think I’m part of the Angry Robot blog tour for Al Hess’ next book, Key Lime Sky, later in the year. I’m looking forward to that. I’ve also signed up for Hess’ newsletter, so I’ve got the ebook for a pre-curser to World Running Down to read.
The plot: Valentine Weiss is a scavenger in a future Utah, where the cities are a haven of free healthcare, transport and education, where there is food in abundance and stable housing. Outside of the heavily guarded cities are small settlements and encampments living on marginalised land, home to marginalised people – the religious conservatives, the social conservatives, the Queer and the poor. To get in to Salt Lake City, with the medical care he needs – testosterone and surgery – he needs a visa and to pass a citizenship test. But that requires money.
With his friend, Ace, or Audrey, who is hoping to get a visa so she can join her distant family in the city, he takes on various jobs out in the dangerous salt flats and mountains. The pair run fuel runs for small settlements, fight off salt pirates, and search for anyway to make money. One a job to drop off fuel, they find a messenger waiting for them.
This is Osric, an AI Steward forced into an android body. Osric doesn’t understand his body, or what it needs – food, water, sleep, going to the toilet. He’s overwhelmed by all the sensations, and irritated by clothes. So he spends a lot of time taking his clothes off, and only putting them on when he really has to.
Valentine is very attracted to Osric, first physically, and then, getting to know him, to his kindness, intelligence and empathy. Valentine feels so much empathy for his new friend, he’s overwhelmed by care for him, and for everyone else. He helps Osric with basic human tasks and then listens to his message. A job, as yet unknown, for a wealthy person in Salt Lake, with the reward of clothes and a visa.
The clothes are important. Valentine feels more himself in a suit. It helps him cope with his dysphoria. Ace loves the dresses. The trio head to Salt Lake, where an interaction with another Steward at the reception centre helps Osric understand more about how he ended up in an android body, and to set in motion events that would change society, although they don’t know it. The job turns out to be a retrieval of goods – eight female androids stolen by a former brothel manager. Osric, we discover, has been embodied to be the new manager, while Valentine and Audrey are need to recover the androids.
The trio go back out on the road after some contretemps in the brothel, and soon find the androids in a camp of Mormon salt pirates. An awl used as a weapon brings about the discovery that the androids are gaining sentience, and they really don’t want to go back to the brothel.
This brings Audrey and Valentine into conflict. He won’t force sentient beings into being escorts if they don’t want to, but she is desperate for the visa that will get her to her family. Osric needs to go back whether he wants to or not. His body is owned by the brothel, and he wants to return to the collective of the Stewards. What will they do?
Hess is an autistic, trans writer, and I can tell. Not that I’m judging, I really appreciate the representation. Osric is right; clothes are itchy and uncomfortable! I often don’t wear clothes if I can avoid it.
Not being a dread pirate, I can’t tell you how accurate his portrayal of the internal experience of ADHD is, or the struggles with dyscalculia the Valentine clearly has. I do have a lot of AuADHD and ADHD colleagues, friends and relatives, so I can recognise the external manifestations. I also get the frustrations with the world and with people who don’t get it, or won’t take the time to understand.
I identified strongly with both Valentine and Osric, and their struggles with embodiment and identity. It brought up some stuff, okay, I’m working on it. Can I be an android, please? There’s a lot of emotional angst and conflict while the pair work out what they feel and what they want to do. It hurt. I loved it.
Al Hess writes ‘cosy sci-fi’ and I like it. The story are domestic and emotionally charged, placed in a future world that is both better and worse. In the cities, life is materially great, if you don’t think about what’s outside. Life outside if the cities is brutal, but there is love and community, even if it’s hard to get food and medical care. It’s morally complex and questions the utopian ideals of some sci fi.
It’s cosy, gay and neurodivergent adventure in the desert and I really enjoyed this book and I’m looking forward to reading more by Hess. I have already ordered a copy for someone and recommended it be added to the fiction section of the Little Neurodivergent Library at work.
Format: 245 pages, Hardcover Published: November 14, 2023 by Tor Publishing Group/Tordotcom ISBN:9781250826978 (ISBN10: 1250826977)
Description
Am I making it worse? I think I’m making it worse.
Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.
But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.
Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.
Emma must work alone, and with the Gussman family apparently avoiding her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to hide? As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants.
When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and memories of his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could this young woman’s tragic death somehow hold the key? Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past – Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest winter…
Format: 352 pages, Hardcover Published: November 21, 2023 by Hodderscape ISBN: 9781399724685 (ISBN10: 1399724681) Language: English
Blurb
Marriage isn’t always sunshine and unicorns… sometimes it’s monsters and necromancy.
In a world of magic and adventure, Logan “the Bear” Theaker had hung up his axe and settled down with his sunshiny bard husband, Pie. But when Pie disappears, Logan is forced back into the world he thought he left behind.
The kingdom is in turmoil, and Logan must come out of retirement to save it. But first, he must save his beloved husband from whatever danger he’s in. With the help of an old adversary and a ghost from his past, Logan discovers that Pie has been blackmailed into stealing a powerful artifact capable of creating an undead army.
The fate of the kingdom hangs in the balance as Logan and his team set out to stop the brewing war and put an end to the king’s ban on magic. But in doing so, Logan must confront his own hero complex and come face to face with the one man who’s ever made him feel worthy of love.
Legends & Lattes meets Kings of the Wyld in this thrilling, queer, light fantasy. Follow Logan and Pie’s journey as they fight to save their love and the kingdom they call home.
My Review
I got myself a signed copy of this book from Goldsboro Books a couple of weeks ago and started reading it when it arrived two days ago. I’ve been busy with work and blog tours so I only got three chapters in, until this evening. Four and a half hours later I’ve finished reading the book.
We meet Pie and Logan at a village festival, a few months after they marry and settle down from their lives on the road as a bard and a hero. But things quickly go wrong when Pie disappears on a trip to the nearest city and Logan has to search for him. He calls on a necromancer he once arrested and that sets off a chain of events that eventually include grave robbing, nearly drowning, killing a king and unicorns, lots of unicorns.
This romp of a story is a D&D campaign! Seriously, it has the sorts of characters and structures you get in a really good game, with a really good DM. There’s an inciting event, a quest, a collection of characters who appear and join the expedition, monsters to defeat, an even bigger challenge to over come when it looks like you’ve got to the end, and a final big boss to destroy. It was a lot of fun to read.
It was also heart-breaking at times! Pie and Logan are absolutely wretchedly in love and their arguments are caused by love and their insecurities as they face their pasts and their feelings. I cried, a few times. I
I’m soppy, I know.
They’re so lovely though, and they develop over the course of the novel as they confront their fears and insecurities about being left behind, and express how overwhelming their love for each other is.
I found the countess hilariously funny, relentlessly positive and of all the secondary characters she’s my favourite. She has a sad history, uses her magic for seemingly trivial things like getting the gardening done, and is feared because she’s a necromancer. Yet, she comes through in the end, even though she sort of betrayed Logan before the story started. And she has a CHARTER!
I loved the descriptions of places and people in the book, they were very evocative and quite, quite amusing at times. The contrast between the ‘real’ world, the ‘pocket’ world of the unicorns, and death’s realm were very clear and stark. I loved the descriptions of the library in the capital. Also, totally agree with Logan on the suspended walkways. They are a baaaaaad idea.
A riveting technological thriller following a woman whose life is upended when her husband and son disappear in a mysterious plane crash and she is left alone with an unnerving home robot, only to get caught up in an AI-related conspiracy.
In near-future Japan, Susie Sakamoto is mourning the loss of her husband and son to a plane crash. Alone in her big modern house, which feels like more of a prison, Susie spends her days drinking heavily and taking her anger out at the only “sentient” thing left in her life: Sunny, the annoying home robot her husband designed. Susie despises Sunny, and sometimes even gets a sinking feeling that Sunny is out to hurt her.
To escape her paranoia and depression, Susie frequents the seedy, drug-fuelled bars of the city, where she hears rumours of The Dark Manual, a set of guidelines that allow you to reprogram your robot for nefarious purposes. In the hopes of finding a way to turn off Sunny for good, Susie begins to search for the manual, only to learn it’s too late: the machines are becoming more sentient and dangerous. Thrust into the centre of a dark, corporate war, Susie realizes there’s someone behind the code, pulling the strings. And they want her dead.
With a darkly humorous yet propulsive voice, O’Sullivan presents us with an unsettling look at a future that feels all too real. Gripping and thought-provoking, Sunny is a haunting character study of an anxious woman teetering in an anxious time.
Genre: steampunk historical fiction Publication Date 27 November 2023 ISBN 978-1-3999-5773-1 Dimensions 229 x 152mm Extent 306 pages RRP £9.99 BIC FL, FV Rights Worldwide
Published by Open Door Books. Page design and typesetting by SilverWood Books.
Key Selling Points
From the author of The Mechanical Maestro and The Copper Chevalier, a new story following the Abernathy siblings as they face an enigmatic adversary.
Character-driven story centred around three genius siblings.
A steampunk-tinged tale with Gothic overtones sure to enthral fans of clockwork, androids and the Victorian era alike.
Immersive world filled with colourful characters.
Blurb
1863
Six years have passed at Ravenfeld Hall. The Abernathy siblings’ fortunes continue to improve as George and Douglas’s android-building business thrives. But change looms on the horizon. Douglas’s engagement to the sweet, charming Clara Marsden threatens to take him from his family, while sister Molly contemplates whether a future with the man she loves means sacrificing her independence and academic pursuits.
Then the family face more pressing concerns…
One night, George’s latest invention escapes the Hall. Four months later, a charismatic inventor by the name of Gearhart appears in London, with an intellect to rival that of the Abernathys’. George senses there’s something sinister about the mysterious Mr Gearhart, who’s planning to unveil an invention that could change the world. But does he have far grander ambitions? And can George uncover the truth about him in time?
) Published February 28th 2023 by Head of Zeus Hardcover, 460 pages Author: Django Wexler ISBN: 9781801101424 Format:460 pages, Paperback Published: February 28, 2023 by Orbit ISBN: 9780316519663 Publisher : Head of Zeus — an AdAstra Book (9 Nov. 2023) Paperback : 528 pages ISBN-10 : 1801101442 ISBN-13 : 978-1801101448Format: Audiobook Published: August 8, 2023 by Orbit ISBN:9781668634899
Blurb
Two siblings divided by magic and revolution must finally join forces and rally the people to take down the Twilight Order once and for all in the final book of this brilliantly imagined epic fantasy trilogy. The last surviving Chosen, Ashok has finally risen up and taken control of The Twilight Order. He promises equality and prosperity, but Gyre and Maya know the truth. Only death follows in Ashok’s wake. To take him down, Gyre will have to unite old allies from all across The Splinter Kingdoms and the depths of Deepfire. And Maya will have to seek out a legendary weapon hidden in the mountains that could turn the tide in their battle for freedom.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 